Florida Moves to End Vaccine Mandates, and Trump Battles Wind Farms

0:28Some see borders. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, September 4th. Here's what we're covering.

0:44The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida life. All of them. All of them. With growing confusion and turmoil swirling around vaccine policy in the U.S., states are going their own way. Yesterday, Florida's Surgeon General announced that the state would become the first in the country to end all vaccination requirements for children in schools. Who am I to tell you what you should put in your body? I don't have that right. Your body is a gift from God. At the same time, three states on the West Coast, California, Oregon and Washington, went the other direction, announcing their banding together to form what they called a health alliance to review scientific data and make vaccine recommendations.

1:39The contradictory moves come amid massive upheaval at the federal agency responsible for issuing vaccine guidance, the CDC. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has oversight of the agency. And in the last few months, he's dismantled the panel of experts that makes vaccine recommendations and then replaced several of them with fellow skeptics. He also abruptly dismissed the CDC director after clashing with her over vaccine policy. All of that together has muddied the waters around any national guidance, and public health experts are concerned about the potential fallout.

2:17Vaccine rates for American children have been dropping for the last few years, in part because of growing skepticism and distrust. At the same time, there's been a resurgence in some childhood diseases like measles. Meanwhile, Kennedy is scheduled to appear before the Senate today, where vaccines will very much be a topic of conversation. Before Kennedy got confirmed, he said repeatedly that he was not going to do anything that made it either difficult or discouraged people from taking vaccines. But in the seven months since then, he's done a lot of that. My colleague Cheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy.

2:57She says senators are expected to grill Kennedy, including some Republicans who've said they feel Kennedy's actions contradict the promises he made to win their votes in the confirmation process. question is what Senator Bill Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, will do. He voted somewhat reluctantly for Mr. Kennedy after extracting a series of concessions and promises about vaccine policy. And Senator Cassidy wouldn't say on Wednesday whether or not he still had confidence in the health secretary. But Mr. Kennedy is defending himself. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece earlier this week.

3:38He took a shot at the CDC. He complained about decades of quote, bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep. And he said that it was up to him to restore trust in the agency and that's what he's going to do.

3:57President Trump's announcement this week that the U.S. military had blown up a boat, he said was carrying drugs to the U.S., has raised questions about the legality of the attack. The U.S. Navy has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters. But this week's attack, which the administration said killed 11 people on board, was a marked departure from that approach. One former law enforcement official told the Times, in all of my years of doing this, I've never seen the U.S. military say, okay, this is a drug shipment, and then just blow it up. It's not clear why the military didn't try to stop the boat, or if those on board were offered the chance to surrender.

4:39We knew exactly who was in that boat, we knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented. And that was Trendy Arague, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States trying to poison our country with illicit drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the operation on Fox and Friends, but the Trump administration has not offered any legal rationale. Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated several gangs and drug cartels as terrorist organizations. And this summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio maintained that meant the government could use military force against them.

5:14But as a matter of law, that designation allows the government to sanction groups to do things like freeze their assets, not authorize combat activity against them. Representative Adam Smith the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was concerned about the lack of information and transparency and whether the attack had violated the Constitution.

5:42Also in the Trump administration, the Times has been looking into how officials are escalating their fight against a key renewable energy source, wind power. The president has been a longtime critic of clean energy projects, especially offshore wind farms. He's called them ugly, expensive, and inefficient. And his disdain goes back more than a decade to a dispute over a project off the coast of Scotland, which was visible from one of his golf courses. Now, the Trump administration is intensifying its efforts to thwart the industry. This summer, officials reversed a handful of federal approvals for wind farms and shut down a$4 billion project that was nearly complete.

6:23Developers say if finished, it would have powered some 350 ,000 homes. The administration has also enlisted a number of federal departments to help in its fight, some of which typically have little to do with wind power. The Department of Health and Human Services is studying whether wind turbines emit harmful electromagnetic fields, though experts say there's no evidence of negative environmental or health effects. And the Department of Defense is looking into whether offshore wind projects pose a national security risk. Recently, Trump's attacks on renewable energy have even extended abroad.

6:58I'm trying to have people learn about wind real fast. And I think I've done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying and they're destroying themselves. At a cabinet meeting last week, the president, who received tens of millions of dollars from oil interests during last year's campaign, said he hoped other countries would turn away from green energy projects, and he continued to rail against wind farms. They're ugly. They don't work. They kill your birds. They're bad for the environment. In some cases, the White House is even strong-arming other countries to back fossil fuels, promising to punish them with tariffs and visa restrictions if they sign on to an agreement designed to slash global emissions.

7:42In Lisbon, Portugal, one of the city's iconic tourist attractions, a funicular that carries riders up a steep hill in the city's center, crashed yesterday, killing at least 17 people. Authorities have not confirmed the cause of the accident. Some local news outlets initially reported that a cable had most likely come loose. The accident happened just after 6 p.m. and sent the yellow carriage of the Elevador de Gloria hurtling into a building. Lisbon's mayor said all of the city's funiculars, which are popular given all of the hills there, have been suspended until a full inspection is complete.

8:25And finally, when Starbucks first expanded into China in 1999, it basically helped create a market for coffee there in a country where tea had been dominant. China quickly became one of the company's biggest moneymakers. But Starbucks' dominance there has been slipping over the last few years. Its market share fell from 40 % in 2017 to 14 % last year. One reason? The meteoric rise of the Chinese brand Luckin Coffee, which has nearly three times as many stores in China than Starbucks, and opens a new one on average every hour. Now Luckin is coming for Starbucks on its home turf, the United States.

9:08Today I tried out Luckin Coffee, which originated in China. The chain arrived in New York this summer. Oh yeah. This is actually a really good flavor. The Luckin locations fully embrace technology. Customers have to order on their phones, and they get an alert when their drink is ready. No interaction with any baristas necessary. Starbucks, on the other hand, has struggled to adjust to the growing popularity of mobile ordering, leading to sometimes chaotic pickup lines that the company's former CEO even compared to mosh pits. At this point, the competition Starbucks is facing from Luckin in the U.S.

9:44is still very small. They've only opened four stores. But the Chinese brand said on Instagram that was, quote, just the beginning. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how this week's landmark antitrust ruling on Google could impact the AI arms race. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest updates and the Friday News Quiz.